Perspective
 

I recently have had a mighty big realization in my brain. Every second we spend whining about school uniforms or politicians or 9-11, there's a supernova going on, out there, somewhere in a distant galaxy that will take thousands of years for us to see, and millions to spot the supernova, and yet it will kill entire planets. Now that really takes a big fat perspective. Whoa, you hate spice girls? Well guess what, a black hole is sucking up a solar system! Whoa, you think Bush is a dork? Well guess what, a supernova is going on out there! What, you think your life sucks? Well guess what, an asteroid just sent a planet hurtling into the sun!
There are supernovas, asteroids, black holes; massive destruction is going on every three seconds and we have the gall to whine about politicians. I just think that really shows the level of stupidity and self-centeredness that the human race gathers up.
Think about it. It's really there, going on, while you read this some planets are being sucked into a black hole, suns are going supernova, the massive destruction of the most horrible type. And if there are other intelligent races, then we've got huge massive H-Bombs blowing up billions of people.
And we have the sense to whine about politicians.
Makes you feel real tiny, doesn't it?

Yeah, I guess I can see where you're coming from. But, we whine about things we have the ability to change. A supernova or black hole or asteroid (so far) are things the human race has no ability to control. While we're here, living out our lives on this tiny grain of sand in an endless sea, feel free to gripe once in a while. I'm glad to at least have that freedom. To piss and moan any time I want. :D

Well poop, when you put it that way what's the point right? Nah, I'm not gonna let supernovas in distant galaxies bother me when there's too much on our plate right now. We're too busy having wars and working out internal conflict to busy ourselves with the thought of other races inhabiting the galaxy.

On that note, even if we did find alien species, how long before we would decide they were a threat?

Sure those things are happening to other planets in other systems, but the one everyone should look after is our own. Sure humanitity makes a fuss of itself so this is what we do.... smack it, kick it and move on. End of story.

does anyone remember that old calvin and hobbes comic where they were outside at night and Calvin remarks about how vast the universe seems, and hobbes says "it makes you wonder why man considers himself such a big flipping deal" then it shows Calvin inside shouting "turn on all the lights! turn the TV up all the way!"

gotta love C&Hs.

When you see things from the grand perspective, its hard to take life so seriously anymore.

For now, our race is puny and divided. I dont see things changing until we find something we hate more than ourselves.

Still, even the smallest actions can have untold effects on the universe.

Before I give my philosophy, lemme open up with a recollection from a few months ago.

I was participating in the flaming cesspool that man calls the AOL news forums, an unmoderated firestorm of people saying the most hateful things, banditing about conspiracy theories, prejudiced "kill 'em all" remarks (be it nationality, sexual preference, ethnicity, religion) and spamming posts that had nothing to do with the topic at hand.

I threw in my own topic addressing the issue, while making some side remarks about most of the AOLers complete disregard for English manuscript. Naturally every one of them, in their netspeak-riddled, mispelled posts, harped on it - finding any typo or grammatical error and saying "rofl u shudnt b talkin cuz u typo 2!" and so on.

Anyway, one of them (in all caps) said of my side remarks, "IN THE GREATER SCHEME OF THINGS, HOW IMPORTANT IS THIS?" Obviously saying that it's not worth anyone's time to remark on how the AOLers have no English skills whatsoever.

That's a card many people love to play; ridicule, overt or covertly, of discussion or fussing over a certain issue at hand, because "in the greater scheme of things" it amounts to little.

Yet they realize in the greatest scheme of things, we don't mean anything at all. Humanity will, likely, destroy itself before it can escape the solar system - or an asteroid will do it for us, or some other cosmic/natural disaster. Then when the sun finally goes red giant, Earth will be erased of all presence humanity ever had on the planet; it'll be left like Mercury, if it even survives immolation.

And billions of years later the universe will end somehow. Big Rip, Big Crunch, Big Freeze... And we do not yet know of a way to either prevent its end and maintain the status quo, or escape this universe to another one and live on. (Of course, we have billions of years til any projected end... plenty of time, should we live and survive)

What I'm getting at is - the odds of us surviving are stacked against us, and if we lose the universe will never know. Alien explorers may never find Earth or evidence of a civilization on the planet in the aeons to come - if they even pass this way at all.

So in reality all of what we do is and will be likely for naught. Our hobbies, or lives our issues, our discussions, our wars - no one will know of it in a billion years, likely.

But we don't live our lives in that frame of mind. We live in the now, we live day by day and our frame of mind therefore is only as big as our communities, our cities, nations, or our planet. Everything we do, therefore, is significant and important to us, in the now, and perhaps in the near future.

Odd words coming from a guy who wants to see his species survive, I'm betting. I still want and push for humanity to survive itself and whatever space or nature may throw at us, so that maybe our lives and what we have done in the recent and present centuries WILL mean something a billion years beyond.

I do! I do! You are now the fourth person I've found on this site who likes C&H (including myself).

Everyone loves Calvin and Hobbes!

Anyway, why should we really care about a supernova destroying a bunch of hunks of rocks thousands of parsecs away? How does that affect me? Self-centered: maybe. Realistic: yes.

The human race is built to survive, and we're not going to let a 200 mile piece of rock decimate the planet...again. But seriously, the odds are against every species in the universe in my opinion, and humans are the only ones we know of that have significantly altered the environment and discovered cosmic theories and mathematics (except for some cats, because cats are just that cool). If a rock is going to destroy the planet in 1000 years, I bet you we'll do whatever possible to survive.

The main reason the human race is divided is because we haven't had a singular goal yet. If we had some Aliens that we deemed fleshy enough to kill, then I think the countries would unite pretty fast.

Trev, thank you so much. Thats my point of view exactly.

I've heard alot of times when people argument about something, like a kid argueing about dress code, someone will actually say something like "Well, in other countries, your forced to do this and this, and you have more rights than you think, so you shouldn't complain." I know the dress code thing is a bad example, but the viewpoint is that just because our society is better than others, we should stop working on it. "Our health care sucks? Well, it sucks worse in china, so stop complaining."

No, don't stop complaining. Even if its something as small and insignificant as humanity, we can always strive to make things better.

I wonder if I even made sense.